------------------------------------------------------------------------ [...continued. Part 2 of 2] World War II and collective imperialism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible . . ." - Harry S. Truman, 1941(4) Seen from the perspective of Jack's tree, so to speak, the major events of World War II make up a battle scenario worthy of a Hollywood thriller. What basically happened is that Germany and Russia clobbered one another, while Japan got itself embroiled throughout Asia. The US, after first arming Germany and Japan, then switched its support to Russia and China. While the rest of the world was becoming engulfed in war, the US made profits in turn from both sides and engineered remotely the balance of power. Finally, after the German advance had peaked, and when Japan's expansion had reached alarming proportions, Jack came down from his tree. The US froze all Japanese assets, cutting off their oil supply, and making prompt US entry into the war inevitable. The US had access to good intelligence regarding Japanese plans and deployments. The British, with their phenomenal wartime decryption advances, had broken "unbreakable" Japanese (and German) codes. Whether President Roosevelt knew the exact day and hour of the planned raid on Pearl Harbor may be open to question, but he knew the attack was coming, he had nonetheless asked advance observation posts on Kauai to stand down, and he knew enough about the timing to make sure the strategically critical aircraft carriers were safe at sea when the attack occurred. December 7, 1941 was indeed a day of infamy, but who's infamy? The first phase of US battle strategy was to contain Japan in the Pacific, while concentrating US forces in Britain and North Africa. Despite the successful raid in Hawaii, Japan posed no immediate threat to the US mainland. US bombing raids of German-occupied territories joined those of Britain, but the US delayed landing troops in Europe until the most advantageous moment -- when the Soviets had begun their advance toward Germany. In January, 1944, the Soviets kicked the Germans out of Leningrad and Allied forces landed in Italy the same month. By Spring, Germany had been mostly pushed out of Soviet territory, and on D-Day, June 6, Allied forces landed in France -- the race to Berlin was on. Even after the Allies began their drive toward Germany, there were four German divisions on the Eastern front for every one in the West. The German giant was still facing the Russian giant, while attempting to hold off the Allies with a rear-guard action. Unlike Jack, Uncle Sam had to do considerable fighting himself in Europe, or at least American soldiers did, but as with Jack, the main battles were among others. American timing was nearly perfect. Only the unexpectedly rapid advance of Soviet forces prevented US troops from being the first to reach Berlin. Berlin had been bombed continually, but the most intense raids of the war were carried out over Berlin after Soviet troops were advancing into Germany, the objective being, apparently, to slow Soviet progress by flooding the highways with refugees. The US then turned its attention toward Japan. Although America suffered terrible casualties in fierce island warfare in the Pacific, the US situation was immeasurably improved by the fact that Japanese forces were spread out on the Asian continent and in Asian waters, entangled with giant China. All in all, when the war was over, the giant-killer American strategy had worked out brilliantly. US casualties were miniscule compared to the tens of millions lost by Germany, the Soviets, and the Chinese. And while the war devastated every other major nation, for the US it was one of the most economically profitable undertakings in world history. From the depths of the Great Depression in the mid thirties, the US emerged in 1945 with 4x% of the world's wealth and industrial capacity, and with all of its infrastructures intact. In terms of competitive imperialism, the US had pulled off a major coup. The US had made inroads into the oil-rich Middle East, and was well poised to push its advantage as an imperial power in the postwar era. The US controlled the seas, and no other major power was in an economic position to exploit the many opportunities made available by the general global disruption. But the US had other plans -- its full strategy was yet to be played out. Instead of punishing the vanquished, as the victors had done at Versailles, the US encouraged the rebuilding of Germany and Japan -- but with nationalism and militarism taken out of the school curricula and government policy. And instead of pressing its imperial advantage relative to its Western rivals, the US launched the Marshall Plan. Billions of dollars of aid was given -- not loaned -- to Europe to ensure its rapid reconstruction. The UN was established, providing for the first time a global institution for dealing with international conflicts and problems. Regional treaty organizations such as NATO (North Atlantic) and SEATO (Southeast Asia) were set up to maintain stability, and to provide the US with an excuse to keep its forces deployed at strategic points around the world. In 1948, under US leadership, the Bretton Woods agreements were signed. These agreements fixed exchange rates among major currencies. Since the value of the dollar was pegged to gold at $32 per ounce, all major currencies would now be stabilized, and the currency collapses that plagued the inter-war years could not recur. Part of the Bretton Woods package was GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which proclaimed a general global policy of open markets. In addition, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established. These institutions pooled Western investment funds and provided a systematic means of financing imperialist development projects. Although the rhetoric of the new world system was about the end of imperialism, and the triumph of democracy, the reality was otherwise. The US encouraged the gradual dismantlement of traditional European empires, but imperialism was to continue on a collective basis, using the high-leverage American model. As the US had done for decades in Latin America, the new international institutions were designed to create the conditions favorable to the continued exploitation of traditional Western imperial territories. The business of imperialism had always been about trade and development, on terms favorable to the West. The mission of the IMF and World bank was specifically to support trade and development -- and these institutions were under firm Western control. In 194x President Truman declared(5) that the West's former imperial territories were now the underdeveloped world, and the stage was set for a new global system of collective Western imperialism. Creating the conditions for collective imperialism required more than Western-controlled financial institutions, however. There was also a need for selective military interventions, the arranging of coups, and all those other high-leverage techniques that had supported American-style imperialism in Latin America. The US solution to this problem was for America to extend globally its practice of these techniques. The Central Intelligence Agency was formed, and in 1953 it carried out its first coup. On May 1, 1951, Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran had nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)(6). Iran was certainly within its rights -- Britain had recently nationalized several of its own domestic industries, and the British government was the major owner of the AIOC. But the nationalization was contrary to Western imperial advantage. The CIA, in collaboration with British intelligence, put into motion a series of covert actions, and on August 19, 1953, Mossadegh was forced to yield power to the Shah. In the same style as decades of Latin American tin-horn dictators before him, the Shah became for the next 25 years America's staunchest ally in what was to be frequently referred to as the third world. Iran, which bordered the Soviet Union, was made available as an American intelligence outpost. A new oil contract was signed which ended exclusive British access, and gave a 40% share to an American consortium. This was how collective imperialism was to work. The US was to provide the covert and military support, while the economic spoils were to be distributed on a more or less equitable basis among Western powers. In William Blum's Killing Hope, US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, there are 55 chapters. Each chapter chronicles a comparable episode of imperial management, though many are on a vaster scale. As of this writing, the latest episode is taking place in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where US and German-funded Albanian mercenaries were sent in to stage a phony civil war, with the apparent objective of separating Serbia from Kosovo's mineral wealth. If things run true to pattern, one can expect the faction that comes to power in Kosovo to be very friendly to Western development interests. From Cold War to kultur-kampf: evolution of the new world order ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Part of the US role, in making the world safe for collective imperialism, was the containment of Soviet influence. In 1946, Winston Churchill declared that an "Iron Curtain" separated the West from the communist bloc. "Mother Russia", which had been heralded as the West's staunch ally against fascism, suddenly became the "Red Menace", and the Cold War was on. There began a decades-long propaganda campaign in Western media which demonized the Soviet Union, and later Communist China. The Nazi intelligence network which operated throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was kept intact, and was incorporated into the new CIA. Covert destabilization operations against the communist bloc were an ongoing part of the Cold War. The threat of additional marxist revolutions, in most cases unfounded, was frequently used to justify military interventions whose actual purpose was the management of empire. The communist-threat propaganda was very effective, and it enabled the US to maintain astronomical military budgets. The US always remained several steps ahead of the Soviets in strategic military capability, while the Soviet attempts to catch up were always characterized as threatening -- and so the arms race cycle continued throughout the Cold War. The vast global military machine the US built, allegedly to defend against Soviet expansionism, enabled the US to easily carry out its role as imperial manager in the third world. While imperialist development of the third world proceeded, with minimal interference from the communist bloc, various tactics were employed to gradually wear down and destabilize the Soviet Union. Anti-communist propaganda was distributed by leaflet and by airwaves in Eastern Europe, and uprisings were encouraged in Hungary and other Soviet-controlled countries. Communist forces were drawn into expensive conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, where the borders of the "free world" had been in dispute. The CIA stirred up civil wars in Angola and Afghanistan, and these proved very costly for the Soviets. It was the arms race itself which ultimately bankrupted the Soviets. Russia was always, by American standards, a very poor country. For it to compete on a head-to-head basis with US military might called for expenditures far beyond its means. Within the context of the capitalist system, military expenditures for the US were just one more form of economic growth. But for the Soviets they were a fatal drain on economic resources. In 1990, after a sequence of events that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, the Soviet Union collapsed. Boris Yeltsin pulled Russia out of the Union, with Western backing, and became the chosen Western stooge, in the tradition of the Shah, Noriega, Marcos, et al. Yeltsin shelled his own parliament building, in a haunting replay of a similar action by Lenin over 70 years before, and assured his own dictatorial reign for most of the decade. He kow-towed to Western demands on every occasion and imperialist exploitation of the of the former Soviet domains began. Funds were made available to Russia by the West, but never enough to hold things together in the crumbling economy. The conditions of the loans required Russia to dismantle its existing economic infrastructures, without any plan in place for a smooth transition to a free-market system. The result of Western policy, which was easily predictable from the nature of that policy, was the complete and utter destabilization of Russian society. Russian and East European assets became available to Western buyers at rock-bottom prices, and billions of dollars were smuggled out of Russia by corrupt officials. As of this writing, the downward spiral has still not stabilized. The people of the former Soviet bloc, who initially welcomed capitalism as if it were Santa Claus, now yearn for the good old days of Soviet rule. As the Romans ground Carthage into the dust, so has the West humbled the former super power. Hitler must have smiled in his grave as his lebensraum vision was finally realized. The proper conditions had at last been created, and the subsequent capitalist invasion of the former Soviet bloc was as devastating as had been the earlier invasion by Hitler's Panzer divisions. Even if Russia manages yet to install a representative government, it has almost no chance of ever becoming again a serious threat to Western power. It has been successfully reduced to third-world status, and the former Soviet realms offer vast opportunities for imperialist development and enrichment. The postwar relationship between the West and China proceeded down a different path. When the People's Republic first came to power in China, it was aligned closely with the Soviets, and the Western policy toward the entire bloc was to isolate and contain it. When China split from the Soviets, Western policy became more flexible, and the communist rift was encouraged to widen. In the early seventies the West decided that isolating China no longer made sense, and in 1971 China was allowed to replace Taiwan in the UN. In 1972 President Nixon paid a state visit to China and trade channels were then soon re-opened. Chinese products began to enter global markets, and China's huge population created a major market for Western exports. Trade increased and the Chinese economy grew rapidly. Foreign corporations were allowed to build plants in China, provided they included Chinese partners. Ideology, communist or otherwise, seemed to have little relevance to China's relationship with the West. China was behaving like a competing capitalist power, striving to establish a strong role for itself in the world economy and in Asia. As China began to assume the stature of a major power, it became a potential challenge to Western hegemony and the established system of collective imperialism. China has said that its "natural role" is to be dominant in Asia(7), as said Japan in the years leading up to World War II. The US, meanwhile, has stated that such hegemony would be "contrary to US strategic interests", and reminds us that the US has fought three major Asian wars in this century to maintain its "strategic interests". Today's US policy makers articulate two competing approaches to China: engagement, and confrontation. The goal of engagement is to seduce China into subservience to the US-managed global system, while the goal of confrontation is to accomplish the same result through the use of economic pressure, and if necessary, military force. Both China and the US are now embarked on aggressive weapons-development programs, each aimed at assuring the ability to control the outcome of this final episode of major national competition. China, already a nuclear power, is investing heavily in military technology and is hoping to achieve a breakthrough that will enable it to neutralize the effectiveness of America's premiere weapons system, the carrier task force. The US, meanwhile, is rapidly upgrading its hi-tech electronic warfare systems. In Desert Storm, the US managed to achieve control of theater. With electronic and stealth technology it was able to neutralize Iraq military capability, and was then able to strike at will anywhere in Iraq. If the US can be assured of a similar capability with respect to China, and if the US permits itself the use of tactical nuclear warheads, then it has the basis of a strategy for defeating China in the event a confrontation arises. In a pre-emptive strike it could take out China's strategic missiles. It could then, with control of theater, savage Chinese military and industrial installations as it did those of Iraq. "The world is in the early stages of a new military revolution... the revolution in military affairs revolves around three advances. The first is in gathering intelligence. Sensors in satellites, aircraft or unmanned aircraft can monitor virtually everything going on in an area. The second is in processing intelligence. Advanced command, control, communication and computing systems, known as C4, make sense of the data gathered by the sensors and display it on screen. They can then assign particular targets to missiles, tanks or whatever. The third is in acting on all this intelligence in particular, by using long-range precision strikes to destroy targets. Cruise missiles, guided by satellite, can hit an individual building many hundreds of miles away... "The Pentagon already has, or is developing, most of the technologies required for space weapons. For instance it has just awarded a $l.l billion contract for an airborne laser to hit ballistic missiles. if that technology works, it could be adapted for a satellite..."(8) As China begins to operate aggressively in global markets, and as its economic and military power grow, the China Question will not go away. How this question will be resolved cannot be precisely predicted, but there can be little doubt about the ultimate outcome. It is inconceivable that the US would allow China to reverse the direction of the collective Western system and to return the world to the era of major-power rivalries. With the Soviet Union dismantled, Western planners are already architecting and implementing a new regime of world order. The Cold War regime operated at two levels. At one level, the US was acting to maintain Western advantage in the imperial system. At another level, the one of public rhetoric, the US was acting to contain the communist threat. The imperial basis of US policy will continue, but the end of the Cold War requires a new line of public rhetoric. Drugs and terrorism have provided an ad-hoc solution to this problem, but a more systematic solution is in the works. The new system of world order has been articulated in some detail by a darling of the US policy establishment, Samuel P. Huntington, in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order(9). Huntington divides the world into eight "civilizations", or regions, and provides a detailed description of the dynamics planned for the new regime. Within regions there are to be core states, which are to have a special role in maintaining order within "their" region. As the US "authorizes" Turkish incursions into Iraq, we can see Turkey beginning to assume a core-state role. Between regions we are to expect perpetual "fault-line conflicts", which are to be resolved through the auspices of "non primary level participants. This is what has been happening in Bosnia, where allegedly neutral NATO is "resolving" the fault-line conflict between the Muslim and Christian "civilizations". "The Clash of Civilisations, the book by Harvard professor Sam Huntington, may not have hit the bestseller lists, but its dire warning of a 21st century rivalry between the liberal white folk and the Yellow Peril -- sorry, the Confucian cultures -- is underpinning the formation of a new political environment. "To adapt one of Mao's subtler metaphors, Huntington's Kultur-kampf is becoming, with stunning speed, the conceptual sea in which Washington's policy-making fish now swim."(10) Huntington is a member of and spokesman for The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). I will have more to say about the CFR in Chapter 2, and its central role in elite planning. Suffice it to say for now that ideas published by CFR frequently show up as US Government policy in subsequent administrations. Policy makers are indeed swimming in the sea articulated by Huntington, and we can see the evidence "on the ground". When the US Embassy was recently bombed in Nairobi, the US did not try to retaliate against the specific terrorist groups involved. Instead it defined whole nations (Sudan, Afghanistan) as the targets of its reprisals, and launched cruise-missile attacks against targets in those nations. President Bill Clinton said "The countries that persistently host terrorism have no right to be safe havens."(11) Under the kultur-kampf regime, terrorism and reprisal become acts of war across fault-line rifts. Huntington's core states are nothing really new, but are simply a renaming of what have been traditionally called "Western client" states. Managing "fault line conflicts" becomes the excuse for intervention, in place of "defending strategic interests," but maintaining collective Western domination continues to be the underlying agenda. The "civilization paradigm" provides a philosophical rationalization for Western powers to engage more openly in their ongoing business of collective domination. Under this regional regime there is no danger of armageddon, nor is there any hope of a final peace. Ongoing managed conflict is to be the order of things, providing dynamic stability, with the price in suffering to be paid by the people of the non-Western "civilizations". Under this scheme the postwar myth of universal democratization is being explicitly abandoned. Instead each region is expected to exhibit its own "cultural norms", which "unlike the West" do not necessarily include a concern for human rights or democracy. The Western-serving, oppressive Third World regimes which have long been the embarrassment of the "free world", are now to be accepted as "normal" for "those parts of the world". Huntington's civilizational paradigm thus provides an ideal philosophical basis for a stable Western-imperial global system. It gives Western nations a plausible justification for acting collectively in their self interest on the world stage, namely that they are simply playing their natural role as one of the contending civilizations. It gives Western forces a "right" to intervene, as "disinterested parties" adjudicating "fault-line" conflicts or "disciplining" core states. It is disastrous in terms of human rights and democracy, but it is an effective strategy for maintaining Western hegemony under globalization into the new millennium. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [references still incomplete] (1) H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920, Garden City Publishing, Garden City, New York, p. 1005 (2) George Seldes, Facts and Fascism, p. 122; Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, p. 167 (3) William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (4) newspaper report, Independence Mo.? (5) (to be researched) (6) William Blum, Killing Hope, Common Courage Press, Monroe Maine, 1995, pp. 64-72 (7) "The China Threat, A Debate", Foreign Affairs, March/April 1997 (8) "The Future of Warfare", The Economist, March 8, 1997 (9) Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", Simon and Schuster, 1997 (10) Martin Walker, "China preys on American minds -- The US this week", Guardian Weekly, April 6, 1997 (11) "US declares war on terrorism", Guardian Weekly, August 30, 1998, p. 1 [End Chapter 1] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - •••@••.••• To subscribe, send any message to •••@••.••• A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:•••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to: •••@••.••• To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to: •••@••.••• Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance ---------------------------------------------- crafted in Ireland by rkm ----------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon
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